Bitcoin Magazine
Which Way, Bitcoiner? On Purism vs Impact and Size vs Irrelevance
When you’re at the top, the haters proliferate: Taylor knows it, Brady knows it, Rogan knows it, Tarantino knows it.
Basking in the orange fame, Bitcoiners are coming to know it too. This is what winning looks like… which is why so many people are out to get us.
I received a decent amount of pushback for my Vegas “apologist” Take in early June (“Vegas Comedown, or Was Bitcoin 2025 Too Noisy?”). It’s trendy among “hardcore” Bitcoiners and true, in-the-weeds Cypherpunk types to sling dirt on Bitcoin Magazine and major Bitcoin events.
The main objection is always different flavors of the same thing: It’s too base, it’s too corporate, it’s catering to normies, there are too many parasites. Basically, it’s too big and too successful:
Imagine a startup saying “man, I wish we stayed small and generated very little revenue with barely any users and faded into obscurity.”
That’s how some bitconers posture about bitcoin. Bitcoin is the greatest digitally scarce asset and money…the world wants it. That’s GREAT!
— Trey Walsh (@ktreywalsh) July 30, 2025
We (BTC Inc — the parent company of Bitcoin Magazine and the organizer of the largest Bitcoin conference(s) in the world) — had brought everyone who is anyone to Vegas, plus a bunch of politicians and company execs and establishment elites. (In short, we turned Sin City into Simp City.) Not everyone was happy about that — not even within our own ranks, demonstrably so by Shinobi refusing to attend.
Like I pointed out in the comedown piece, that kind of size and mainstreaming attracts a lot of parasites.
Have Bitcoiners Lost Their Way?
Right after Vegas, I attended a much less ostentatious affair, hidden away in the back alleys of Barcelona during peak tourist season. The BCC8333, Barcelona Cyphers Conference, saw a hundred or so Bitcoiners congregate and listen to pretty in-depth talks and demo sessions. The arguments were not over Steak N Shake or political shill fests, but Lightning liquidity and protocol changes.
The vibes couldn’t have been any more different. Max Hillebrand, a Cypherpunky-type most known for his work with Wasabi Wallet, on stage in Barcelona said something snarky about the Vegas conference (I’m paraphrasing from memory): “I don’t think even 1% of the attendees there understand Bitcoin.”
To the extent anybody understands bitcoin, yes, that’s a roughly correct number. But 1% of 35,000 Vegas attendees is still multiples of the audience in the dimly lit Barcelona flamenco venue where Hillebrand spoke.
What I’ve never understood is why there has to be such animosity between the two. Anyone can attend both (or either) of these sorts of events, and see and feel the difference for themselves. And if some people don’t want to attend the large-scale events but get most of the benefits from them taking place, you can just go to the city — ticketless — and hang out. That way, you have a chance to meet all the Bitcoiner people worth meeting and attend all the juicy side events.
The Uber driver in Vegas taking me to one such side event inquisitively asked questions and was astonished that Vice President Vance was there. Now he’s gradually learning more, stacking reward-sats with Fold and DCAing at River.
Safe to say that didn’t happen in Barcelona, where not even the tourists on the crowded street right outside or the flamenco dancers, eager to get their venue back, could tell what was up.
Bitcoin is a funnel, a gradual journey, a step-by-step learning process that everybody who has gone through can testify to. That means we need events and educational material, people and ideas, that cater to every level — newbies and pros alike.
Do I love the political shill fest that our Vegas event turned into? No.
Am I happy about the shitcoinery and parasititic ventures that massive, successful Bitcoin events attract? No.
Am I happy about bitcoin treasury companies financializing the shit out of bitcoin, and, in time, quite likely blowing up? Hell no — read our next Bitcoin Magazine Print issue.
But that’s what Bitcoiner success looks like.
Too Much Fuzzing, Not Enough FOSSing
“What is all this SPAC shit going on?,” Car González asked on Stacker News Live while roasting (“slaying?”) David Bailey (co-owner of BTC Inc, and founder of Nakamoto Holdings, affiliated with Bitcoin Magazine and for which Bitcoin Magazine provides certain marketing services) on air. “Why are there people at the top of this thing just putting a spigot here and siphoning off it?”
González’s own business, PlebLab, out of Austin, Texas, is something between a coworking space and a “community accelerator for the Bitcoin era.”
The show that Bailey joined to talk about González’ accusations gets — conservatively estimated, seven-and-a-half views — speaking loudly and forcefully into the headphones of a core, committed group of Bitcoiners. I’m all for it; at times, even enjoying it… but you’re not changing the world with that (or even your neighborhood in Austin).
Hack, FOSS, build, and cypherpunk your way into a beautiful cypherpunk world. We need that. But PlebLab, as awesome a local Austin institution as it looks like from afar, is microscopic, the reach it has immaterial and meagre.
I’m not saying selling out for size, or always be compromising ideals for reach… but at some level, that’s a necessary implication if you want to make change in the world. There’s a reason David Bailey is on CBS Sunday, and he or Jack Mallers get on Bloomberg, or Saylor on CNBC — in front of hundreds of thousands (or millions) of people — raising millions to acquire bitcoin, while González codes and builds an incumbator-type center for hundreds of people. Cool, great, Bitcoin and Bitcoiners need people like that.
How About We Keep Bitcoin Tiny, Obscure, and Irrelevant?
People who don’t like the mainstreaming of bitcoin seem to be saying, “Nah, man; I liked my favorite garage band when it was small and irrelevant.”
It’s like they’re praying, not for success but for failure simply because they were lucky enough to have restricted access. Please, fate, don’t let them be successful.
That’s a ridiculous idea.
This post Which Way, Bitcoiner? On Purism vs Impact and Size vs Irrelevance first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Joakim Book.